Author: Isthisnogood

Getting to know the cleaning lady [MF]

This one is going to be a bit shorter than my usual fare, I hope you enjoy this nevertheless! Another difference is that this is still ongoing, I’ll type some out later.

I recently moved to another city, back in with an old friend of mine. We used to live together a couple years back, doing volunteer service. We’ve seen each other frequently enough since then, so when I got a job offer in her city she offered to move in with her, for a year initially. One of the perks of two people with jobs living together is that you have actual disposable income, though less time to spend it. Accordingly, my flatmate (Debbie) has a cleaning lady. She comes basically on demand, does the kitchen, bathroom and then rooms or windows, if there’s still time. Read more »

Hate[F]ucking [M]y Colleague (long)

For the past couple years, I’ve worked for a large multinational company in the finance department. Trust me, that was never where I saw myself going, and I can’t say I was very happy there. But the pay and benefits were pretty decent, so I staid. Now, I’ve luckily found a different job that I enjoy significantly more, and have the leisure to tell some interesting stories involving my colleagues.
Generally, my philosophy is “don’t shit where you eat”, and that includes relationships at work. It almost never works out, and you’ll be spending 8 hours a day with them afterwards. Not even speaking of the gossip, potential HR involvement, you get the picture. For the most part, I did follow that maxime, with three exceptions over the course of my career there. All of them were interesting in their own way. Read more »

[M]y [F]latmate, naked (long)

This story sadly does not have a particularly happy ending and honestly, I regret it. I lost a good friend to it, and I should have known better. Despite that, I think it’s a good story, and there were some really steamy encounters.

It all began with me flathunting. I had to move out of my small one bedroom apartment due to the landlord claiming Own Usage, basically the only way you can get a tenant out in Germany. I wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment on my own with housing prices what they were, so I started looking for shared flats. Now, I’d been living here for almost four years so I had pretty decent connections, or so I thought. But there was no opening in any shared flat where I actually wanted to live, so I had to strike out on my own.
Mara and me knew each other from doing some volunteer work together, and she was about to start her studies here and was also looking for a place. Honestly, I was a bit sceptical – she was a couple years younger than me, had never lived in a shared flat before and I knew her as somewhat holier-than-thou. We had a couple phone calls, talked about what we expected from living in a shared flat, and discovered that we actually got along great – similar sense of humour, similar expectations on how to live together.
We found a flat quickly enough – not a great part of town, but well connected, and the flat itself was great. Very bright, good partition for shared living, affordable. We also found a third flatmate, who sadly turned out not too socially compatible with us, but at least he cleans up after himself. Read more »

Trains aren’t just the safest way to travel… [MF] (long)

Though the risk of injury usually comes from other passengers, as seen here.
I was asked to add more paragraphs, so here goes, this time with paragraphs instead of line breaks.
If you wanna skip to the juicy bits: “I woke up”, though I recommend reading the backstory, it sets the scene and might just prime you for what’s to come :)

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In Germany, the train is the long-distance transport of choice for most trips. We complain endlessly, the trains are never on time, they’re way too expensive, but it’s what we got. At least they are usually pretty comfortable, and the train stations leave you right in the city center. Germans are also famously bad at small talk and social interactions with strangers. The unwritten rule is that you try to avoid sitting next to someone as much as possible (even if the alternative is standing), and if you do have to sit next to strangers you basically don’t talk. If there is no other option but to sit next to someone, you look at the seat, then at the person already seated, mumble “This seat still free?”, then sit down and avoid any further interaction. Read more »